A company's enterprise applications running on the company's servers are typically accessed by employees' work computers. The work computers are maintained by company information technology (IT) departments, and configurations are tightly controlled. The work computers, such as laptop computers or desktop workstations, plug into office network jacks or log into encrypted wireless networking hubs. All of the devices, computers and servers, are protected from the Internet by one or more firewalls.
Users are demanding more and more access to company data while on the road, at home, or at other areas outside of companies' offices. For example, salespeople for a company sometimes wish to access contact lists and other well-guarded proprietary data from the company's servers while they are travelling. IT departments have evolved to issuing company-owned mobile devices that they maintain. These include not only the laptop computers that they have supported for some time, but also netbooks and smart phones.
Due to the declining price of consumer electronics in general, users often purchase newer smartphones and computers than those provided by their companies. As a result, the users' personal electronic devices are often more powerful than those provided by the companies' IT departments. With greater processing power, memory and bandwidth available on their own devices than those issued by their companies, some users opt to use their own devices for many company functions that would otherwise be performed on company-issued devices.
Chief information officers (CIOs) may balk at having his or her employee's own personal, BYOD (bring your own device) mobile electronic devices accessing company servers. The threat of a security breach from a user's malware-infected mobile device is just too great. Yet, the lure of not having to purchase or maintain another user device—one which the user wants to use anyway—is promising.
There is a need in the art for safe access to data on a company's enterprise application servers using employees' own mobile devices.